


Time-Travellers and Royal Dollopheads In Space

by schweet_heart



Series: The Prince's Book of Hours [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, Resurrection, doctor who - Freeform, remix eligible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2335736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Resurrected in the 21st Century, Arthur discovers that Merlin was on Doctor Who. Inspired by <a href="http://labeteglatissante.tumblr.com/post/76804003625/pendragaon-merlin-and-arthur-watching-doctor">this</a> tumblr post.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time-Travellers and Royal Dollopheads In Space

 

"I was on Doctor Who, once, you know."

Merlin says this casually, leaning over the top of the sofa to watch Arthur’s reaction. The former king is barely listening to him, so enthralled is he by the action unfolding onscreen, but when the advertisements come on he blinks and turns towards Merlin, making the face that means _were you speaking, peasant?_ , so Merlin repeats himself, trying not to smile.

"What do you mean,  _on_  Doctor Who?” Arthur asks, sounding put out. “I thought you said he wasn’t real.”

"He’s not," Merlin says, and then he has to explain the concept of television again, because Arthur - fundamentally honest, honourable Arthur - has always had a hard time wrapping his head around the idea of lying for a living. It takes him the next three ad breaks to sufficiently describe what he means, and by the time the credits begin to roll Arthur is looking thoughtful, and a little bit jealous. 

"I suppose you’d fit in all right on the TARDIS," he says finally. "You and the Doctor have a lot in common."

"You mean because we’re both dashingly handsome time-travellers who lost everything they care about and went on the run with a sentient blue box?"

Arthur throws a cushion at him. “I was thinking more about the ears.”

"Hey!" Merlin retrieves the cushion, and after a second’s thought mashes it into Arthur’s face. “You had the ears of an ass once, you don’t get to make cracks about my auditory appendages, thank you very much.”

“ _Mer_ lin. I thought we agreed you were never to speak of that incident again!” 

Arthur actually growls, or Merlin thinks he does — it’s a little muffled by the cushion covering his mouth. Before he can duck out of the firing line, Arthur has grabbed Merlin’s arms and yanked him over the back of the sofa onto his stomach, all elbows and knees, and the two of them fall in a heap onto the floor, wrestling and giggling like schoolboys, the television announcer nattering blithely on in the background unnoticed.  

“Anyway,” Arthur says later, when he has Merlin pinned bodily to the living room floor and is straddling him with a smug expression, as if it hadn’t taken him the better part of ten minutes to gain the upper hand. ”It’s a pity you don’t regenerate, actually. Then you could do something about your unfortunate appearance, instead of going around pretending to be an old man every century or so.”

"Prat," Merlin says, arching his back in a futile attempt to dislodge Arthur’s weight from on top of him. "You like my face, sire, don’t deny it." 

His efforts to escape seem to be having the opposite effect, because instead of letting him go Arthur leans in, his warm breath ghosting against Merlin’s neck, and Merlin is abruptly dizzy with the need to touch him. He squirms ineffectually against Arthur’s restraining hands, then gasps as Arthur sucks the bottom of his earlobe into his mouth, worrying it gently with his teeth.

"I do like your face," Arthur murmurs, his lips tickling against Merlin’s skin. "I even like your frankly ridiculous ears."

Merlin laughs, helpless and a little breathless, and this time Arthur lets go of his wrists so that Merlin can reach up and bracket the king’s face with his palms, drawing him down into a proper kiss. Modern, twenty-first century Arthur is in many ways so different than Arthur the King, and not only because he no longer practically lives in armour and chain mail. Not having a kingdom to run has relieved him of a great deal of the gravity he had always seemed to possess, before, and while Merlin knows better than to think Arthur has wholly changed his personality (he had, when he first returned, seriously proposed challenging the royal family to a duel to regain his title), he has noticed that Arthur smiles more often and laughs more easily now — and he’s much more open about his affection. To Merlin’s definite appreciation.

“Hang on,” Merlin says suddenly a few minutes later, as the two of them reluctantly surface for air. “Does that mean Nine is your favourite Doctor?”

“Well.” Arthur frowns a little, the way he does when he’s measuring his answer very carefully, and Merlin spares a moment to be proud that Arthur understands how important a question this is. Clearly his lectures on Twenty-First Century Pop Culture For Dollopheads have had some measure of success. “He reminds me a bit of my father, actually, the way he hates the Daleks to the point of obsession. So I understand him, but I don’t think I really like him all that much.”

“Oh.” Merlin tells himself he’s not disappointed. “So who’s your favourite, then? Ten?”

Arthur shakes his head, smiling. “There’s only room for one dashingly handsome time-traveller in my heart, _Mer_ lin,” he says. “And God help us if he ever gets hold of a TARDIS. All of history would not be safe.”

For that, Merlin kisses him again. And if, later, after he finally talks Merlin into letting him watch  _Midnight_  half a dozen times, Arthur is prone to occasionally making fun of Merlin’s driving and exclaiming, “We’ve broken down. In the middle of nowhere!” when they - inevitably - get lost on road trips, well. Merlin figures if the price of fulfilling their immortal destiny is having to put up with the Once and Future Prat, it’s a cross he’ll just have to bear. 

And he wouldn’t give it up for all the time-machines on Gallifrey.


End file.
